The present invention relates generally to coin handling mechanisms for use in automatic vending machines, money changing machines and the like, and more particularly to a system and method for properly managing the quantity of stored coins in a coin storage device of a coin handling mechanism.
In general, coin handling mechanisms presently used in automatic vending machines and coin changing machines include a coin storage device commonly known as a coin tube unit. Coins deposited through a coin inlet or slot of the machine are routed to the coin tube unit for storage therein so that the stored coins in the unit are paid out (i.e., issued or discharged) as change or the like. Once the quantity of the stored coins (coin reserves) in the coin tube unit reaches a full-capacity level in any of the coin tubes, some coins overflowing from the coin tube unit are deflected to a cash box.
Conventionally, for management of the quantity of stored coins (coin reserves) in the coin tube unit, a machine managing person (e.g., route man) operates a predetermined inventorying switch to discharge all the stored coins from the coin tube unit, temporarily collects the discharged coins as proceeds, and then manually supplies or replenishes the coin tube unit with an appropriate quantity of coins for use as change to be returned to purchasers. In this case, it is extremely important to know how many coins have been manually supplied, because the total quantity of the manually-supplied coins is the initial or starting point to reckon next-collected proceeds. To this end, it has been conventional for the machine managing person to manually resupply coins while counting the number of the coins supplied (first conventional approach), or to continue manually supplying coins until the coin tube unit is filled with these coins to its recognized full-capacity level to thereby determine the quantity of the supplied coins from the full-capacity level in the unit (second conventional approach).
However, the first conventional approach has the problem that manually supplying coins while counting the number of the coins supplied is very cumbersome and apt to cause errors. On the other hand, the second conventional approach only provides a very inconvenient management in that the full-capacity level does not necessarily represent a same number of coins, for each of the coin tubes, due to different sizes of the coin tubes or different thicknesses of the coins of various denominations to be stored respectively in the individual coin tubes.
To provide a solution to the above-discussed problems, Japanese Patent Publication No. HEI-6-82426 discloses an automatic vending machine, where a to-be-initially-stored quantity is optionally set in numerical value for each denomination of the coins, and payout (issue) or supply of the stored coins is performed for each denomination in such a manner that coins corresponding to the to-be-initially-stored quantity may be stored in the coin storage device at the time of inventory. Further, according to the disclosure of the Japanese HEI-6-82426 publication, arithmetic operations to calculate an increase/decrease in the quantity of the coins corresponding to each supplied or paid-out (issued) coin is performed, during the normal operation of the coin handling mechanism, with respect to the to-be-initially-stored quantity value, so as to constantly provide for accurate calculation and management of the quantity of stored coins in the coin storage device.
However, with the prior art mechanism disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. HEI-6-82426, a particular means has to be provided to numerically set the to-be-initially-stored quantity for each denomination and it would involve very cumbersome setting operations. Further, because such a numerically setting means is generally provided in a central control section of the automatic vending machine considerably apart from the coin handling mechanism, it is not easy for an unexperienced machine managing person (such as an unexperienced route man) to operate both the coin handling mechanism and the central control section.